Nonprofits need to invest in volunteers

Jan. 30, 2009

Volunteerism in Rockland County is alive and well. Up to 4,000 people participate in our Great American Cleanup every spring, but we could use 10 times that number to get all the trash from streets, streams and parks. My own volunteer work includes helping out with yard sales benefitting the Rockland Sister Cities Project with San Marcos, Nicaragua, and participating in "work days" at Blue Rock School, which my children attend.

A couple of notes, however: Rockland needs a group like OneBrick.org, which provides weekly, fun and effective one-time volunteering opportunities, with a strong social networking tone to get young people involved and exposed to a wide range of community organizations. Right now, schools, churches and the courts are creating community service requirements that at times exceed the capacity of local organizations to fulfill in a timely way. I routinely get calls from folks with court-mandated community service requirements who are thrilled to pick up trash because no other nonprofit has been able to provide community service opportunities in a way that meets the person's schedule or time frame (for example, "I need to do 25 hours by next week"). Good snow cover these days means I am actually saying "no." Because coordinating volunteers takes time and resources, nonprofit managers, always overworked and understaffed, have to be really careful about saying "Yes" to anybody who is not going to stick around long enough to learn the ropes, which is a tall order in today's busy world.

In short, we need to really invest in the capacity of nonprofits to incorporate volunteers, not just create volunteer requirements. We need to and recognize the work and creativity nonprofits put into volunteer coordination, and the value this has to volunteers and communities beyond the specific needs of the nonprofits involved.

The writer is executive director, Keep Rockland Beautiful, a nonprofit affiliate of Keep America Beautiful. Its mission is to promote a cleaner and more beautiful county. Reach him at 845-708-9159; learn more at www.keeprocklandbeautiful.org.